Interviewer: Harsh Rana, My Armenia Team
Interviewee: Marie Keep, Director of Fine Wines at Skinner
Interview
Harsh: Has Diran given you a brief overview of what the project is and what we’re trying to do?
Marie: I have a brief overview of... I was reading in a couple different place but I wonder if you could give me a brief overview of it?
Harsh: Awesome, yeah I absolutely can. So basically WPI has an IQP system that stands for the Interactive Qualifying Project and what we try to do is the way they’ve phrased it is they send student in multidisciplinary teams from different majors who don’t really know each other before the project they send them out into the real world to solve a problem.
Marie: Thats fantastic!
Harsh: That’s an essential part of everyone’s graduation and it’s a requirement for graduation.
And for us what we’re trying to do is the Smithsonian Institution and Diran put in talks to basically… what happened was Armenia was having a good case of concentrated tourism where a lot of people used to go to the capital city of Yerevan but not a lot of people were traveling to the rural areas and in the long run what was happening was that the economy of the country was more or less getting better where the tourists were going and not where they weren't. So there were a few websites started by USAID to showcase the rural parts of Armenia and why tourists should travel outside the capital city but the websites weren't able to do what they were trying to do because they weren't reaching a good amount of tourists and a lot of tourists that were
traveling to Armenia were still not using those websites. So this is where the Smithsonian comes in and they are trying to create two more websites. The Smithsonian started the My Armenia project which is basically a project which is documenting rural Armenia and is trying to showcase that through stories to people all over the world and now what they're trying to do is because the new website for My Armenia and a website for Vayots Dzor which is a province in Armenia both of those are coming out. So what they're trying to do is they're asking us for help and were trying to give them the best ways to reach the people who will travel to Armenia.. so
Harsh: Yeah.. so where this interview and where we need your help is basically understanding what wine enthusiasts and people who travel the world... people who are going to different places to try wine, buy wine… what do they like... what is it that gets them to those places and how we can somehow use that information to appeal to those people in the long run.
Marie: Yeah okay fine! Sounds great. Sounds great.
Harsh: Awesome. Awesome. So I’m just going to start with a bit about... obviously we've read about you but I’m just gonna ask you to give us a basic description of your background. Like your story in your words.
Marie: Okay sure. Sure. So I'll start first with I came to the field of auction right after graduation from college found it very interesting. Did different jobs though then came back to auction when my husband came to graduate school at Harvard and started working for Skinner as a manager.. I ran the Boston gallery at Skinner for ten years and in that period of time I realized not only did I love auction but we did not have a wine department. And it was one of the areas we were not going into the sellers to take material, we were going into people’s homes we were going into businesses we were going into attics. I also had a deep interest in wine so I was able to combine both business interest and a personal interest by founding the wine department. So it lined up very nicely. So I proposed the department and put together a business plan for it which i found was crucial especially in the first five years. So we're now celebrating our tenth anniversary this year of the founding of the department so we'll invite you to the party!
Harsh: Oh! We would be lucky.
Marie: In the business plan I… well I don't want to get off topic. So I developed a love of wine really as a teenager when I spent a summer in France and also kind of interestingly which I think may have something to do with this project here is I grew up in Rochester Minnesota where the Mayo clinic is and it's one of the world’s finest clinics. People travel there from all over the world not just to be treated but also to work and so my father was a scientist and ran a lab in biophysics and physiology and he had scientists join him in work from all over the world and he brought me to dinner parties and what people would bring with them as a gift for us was
something from their country and often it was a bottle of wine. It represented their place, it represented their culture, and it represented a bond and that really stuck with me. That wine was a portable piece of a country and a person’s identity.
foundation of discussions that both of the real world and also what people hope and dream in life and it also binds people together. So there's something about wine that is unique. So I'm aware of all of that however in the focus of the business and the founding of the department I was much more interested in how would I get this off the ground because everyone who begins a business is told it takes five years until you really begin to gain a toehold in whatever sector or whatever industry you’re in and I found that certainly five years was a critical mark but I'm in it for the long haul and at ten years I’m really seeing the benefits of having put a very specific marketing plan and client outreach plan in place. So I’ve found that business template very important not just in the research of it and the writing of it but also the adhering to it and hoping to better it and still I started with just myself and now we have a team of three people. We really try to adhere to that plan and always have it foremost in our minds and that we have goals and expectations for ourselves. So kind of is what everyone toils in their everyday workday world is to hit the goals they set for themself. So In reading through the material on the website and reading through some of the things that were sent to me the first question that comes to mind is do you have a business plan for this project?
Harsh: As far as I’m aware, I think the Smithsonian Institution is where the business plan and everything which is not just related just to the website but the actual project... I think that’s being handled by them and not so much by us.
Marie: Okay. Okay. I would ask if you can review it so that your goals are aligned and that you realize the larger goals that the Smithsonian has because that will change how you may think about things or how you may direct your energy. I think that could be helpful because you may glean things from them you may not have thought of and also you may be able to contribute things to their plan.
Harsh: Okay yeah that’s definitely something that we did not think about. Yeah. Wow. Thank you!
Marie: Sure! Sure!
Harsh: Okay so before I get into questions about the project and everything else that we need to get from you I wanted to ask if you're okay with us recording all these answers you that give us about the questions.
Marie: Yeah so that's fine.
sharing who this wine enthusiast is and why her views are important for us and our project.
Would you be okay with that?
Marie: Oh yes I’m fine with that.
Harsh: Awesome. Awesome. Again I would just like to thank you for taking out the time to do this. Thank you so much.
Marie: Oh it's my pleasure. So will any of the recordings be on the website?
Harsh: No the recordings will not. Okay so I’m just going to start off with you obviously heard about Armenia and what we're trying to do here with this project and like you said I'm not...
again this is probably our fault but were not aware of the business model that they have right now but the website and what it's trying to do in trying to attract at least for this conversation trying to attract wine enthusiasts into Armenia using online resources. What do you think about the feasibility of this project?
Marie: I think it's rich with potential. I think that it's a large nut to crack but there are many ways of going about it. There are wine lovers all around the world and the something new will always interest people but the fact that it's also an old new that it's so rich in history and partly an origin story as well will get a lot of attention.
Harsh: Okay. You've definitely spoken about how you’ve been to France which was one of the first places where your interest in wine came about and I'm assuming you've had the opportunity to taste and interact with people who've had wine from all over the world so what are your thoughts on a country that's not a household name. So Armenia is not necessarily related to wines at least enough… hopefully it is in the future but trying to crack that market.
Marie: Right. I think it will take a certain amount of marketing initiative but I think just because you’re not known now certainly doesn’t mean that you won't be known in the future for it and I think what is exciting is that you have the potential to shape how people first think about Armenia and wine that this is really the beginnings of figuring out what you're doing there and how you're going to present it to the world. So you in thinking about it strategically and having many people offer input and think about it critically especially under the Smithsonian that you're going to get the best advice possible.
market the auctions and the wines at Skinner what is your target market. Who do you aim these at and how do you obtain the market that you currently have?
Marie: Right. Well for identifying our target market it's people who have a deep enough love and appreciation for wine and have a certain amount of discretionary money to spend on it and that's true of all wine. No one needs to go out and buy a bottle of wine so we are looking for the people who are specifically looking for not just fine wine but in the auction market fine aged wine. It's a large market, its a diffuse market and we have to figure out where best to put our resources in terms of marketing and advertising to that market and continually growing the concentric circles of clients. We find the best way to do that is to know who we are and what we offer that’s different in the marketplace from our competitors. So I think that's something you want to identify in terms about what's different about Armenia and how you market to a base of wine lovers that are already existent to get their attention and choose to go to Armenia over other countries or as well as other countries. And I think you have many things going for it, one of which you may think is not a strength but is which is it's not known now. So I think that the newness of it and the fact that you can introduce it in a very specific way will be a real positive for you.
Harsh: Awesome. So I think you spoke a bit about using the power of advertisements to make sure that the small circle you have you keep expanding in the form of concentric circles so just expanding the market that you have. What kind of advertisements or marketing strategies do you think are doing the best when it comes to your market at Skinner?
Marie: It's a complicated formula to figure out and sometimes it's easy to measure and sometimes it's not and sometimes it takes a long time to measure.
Harsh: If you had to use advertisements or marketing strategies what advertisements would you use based on your expertise or experience?
Marie: Right. So it all depends on budget but if it's an unlimited budget and I think it's good to start that way sometimes because it makes you think about all the possibilities and then also if you scale it down to a certain degree… what's available. So certainly you want to find people who are interested in travel because Armenia is going to be a destination so all the travel websites, travel television programs, travel radio programs where people are talking about food and wine and not just travel, travel magazines... and if you google travel and leisure magazines you're going to find a large number of places which not only would you consider taking ad space in but also pitching the story. There are so many writers coming at this from so many different
all the print and then all the associated digital advertising and articles as well as all the daily publications... newspaper writers are always looking for very interesting stories… certainly one of them. I would think this would be covered and then the radio possibilities there are many food shows and cooking shows both local and nationally distributed here that if you either had a quick slot on or if you had there are many wine people who would want to talk about it… if you got their ear they would want to talk about it. If you're looking at all these ways people are traveling whether it's a hiking or biking tour, you can certainly find lists of all the groups that go to countries to bike and travel through wine districts. I would think that you would look at other regions to see how they are marketing to people to get them to the destination whether it is a food and wine tour whether it's a behind the scenes wine tour because you'll want to satisfy all different goals for travel. Some people want a much more personal behind the scenes look and the fact that this is something that you are going to be marketing to the world in a new way I think its rich for having people form the program by the feedback they are giving. So things that work really really well you can build further programs on. There's actually an article in the New York Times they were talking about Mexico, and they had a writer who was going down to Mexico who was tasting wine and they established their own program for where they were staying, driving to these totally off the beaten track hotels and then finding these totally off the beaten track restaurants and the wines that were paired with food that's made right there and it was such a fascinating exciting article. So i think if you found that article and kind of got swept in how wine writers go about the experience of it, putting it together and the fact that they like to discover things themselves. You don't want to package it too much, you want to let it be revealed and let it be an experience for people. So what you want to think about first is the soul of what Armenia is and Armenian wine making and how can you communicate that soul to someone that you want to visit so is it through food and wine, is it just wine, is it through the beauty of the natural wonders, is it through the architecture and history, and appeal to people in different ways through the different media.
Harsh: So a lot of things you've said here... it's really awesome to hear because a lot of the things you mentioned are things that didn't even cross our minds. Especially with the article about the wine tasting in Mexico, I think those are the kinds of things that make small stories come out for a lot of people which I think what we're trying to do through the website
Marie: I would caution against trying to polish anything right now. I think you really want to reveal. It's not a polished scene right now so you don't want to make it seem that way. You want to open it up for what it is to people as it is now and as the kind of scene shifts in wine becuase
Harsh: When it comes to reaching out to the people to convey this story, I know that a lot of companies use social media and other forms of technological platforms to reach bigger and broader audience. That's definitely something that you're probably doing right?
Marie: We are. We always mean to do it more because social media… you carry it with you in your pocket. It's very close by but at the same time you want to make sure what you're sending out is appropriate to your brand, is appropriate to your audience, and is what you want to be conveying in the right aesthetic at the right time. It's convenient but I think you also want to also be very aware of what the goals are. It reaches a wide audience if you have people that are following you and are interested and it also reaches a different segment of the marketplace. So people who are on Instagram may be different or similar from the people who are on Facebook and you can put different content there. Instagram is lovely for visuals and for snapshots of the moment which I think goes very well for trying to give someone a very quick glimpse of the possibility of what it would be like to visit Armenia. So I think it's important to know what someone loves about the experience they've had. So I certainly think that's part of your broader
Marie: We are. We always mean to do it more because social media… you carry it with you in your pocket. It's very close by but at the same time you want to make sure what you're sending out is appropriate to your brand, is appropriate to your audience, and is what you want to be conveying in the right aesthetic at the right time. It's convenient but I think you also want to also be very aware of what the goals are. It reaches a wide audience if you have people that are following you and are interested and it also reaches a different segment of the marketplace. So people who are on Instagram may be different or similar from the people who are on Facebook and you can put different content there. Instagram is lovely for visuals and for snapshots of the moment which I think goes very well for trying to give someone a very quick glimpse of the possibility of what it would be like to visit Armenia. So I think it's important to know what someone loves about the experience they've had. So I certainly think that's part of your broader